Revealed: September 27, 2023
Written by: Lukas Harnisch-Weidauer
Jake Maguire was simply three days away from his sixth birthday when he was recognized with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Inspired by his father, a gymnasium instructor, the younger Maguire was already in love with sports activities, particularly baseball. Now 23 and over a decade out of therapy, that love remains to be sturdy, and Maguire is trying ahead to a future as a bodily schooling teacher and coach himself.
As a child, Maguire’s mother and father took him for a blood take a look at at Boston Youngsters’s Hospital after he struggled with a number of infections. The household was rapidly arrange at Dana-Farber’s Jimmy Fund Clinic and Maguire started chemotherapy, a interval that he solely has a hazy reminiscence of.
“I knew I used to be sick,” he says. “However I used to be so younger I didn’t actually perceive what was happening.”
That first spherical of chemotherapy went effectively, however 9 months later, Maguire started having complications and seeing double. It was tough to course of these signs as a baby and he didn’t inform his mother and father about them for some time.
“I used to be simply on the highway in the future and requested my mother and father, ‘Are there two automobiles in entrance of us proper now?’” He remembers. “That’s once they realized we had to return.”
It was discovered that his ALL had recurred, and Maguire needed to endure chemotherapy and radiation to the mind. The energetic child who was trying ahead to a Little League season all of the sudden discovered he had method much less vitality, and he confronted neurotoxicity, a blood clot, and renal failure attributable to the aggressive therapy.
However all through all this, the Dana-Farber Jimmy Fund suppliers and care workforce had been there to shepherd Maguire and his household by means of this tough second. And Maguire says that, regardless of these challenges, the reminiscences which might be clearest to him are essentially the most joyous. Like when a volunteer had a Nerf gun shootout with him, or the numerous visits to the Useful resource Room the place he performed video games and did puzzles.
His recommendation for fogeys is to try to deal with the great instances.
“I do know it’s a disturbing time,” he says. “I can’t even think about what it will need to have been like for my mother and father. I don’t even keep in mind numerous the unfavorable issues, although, I keep in mind the glad instances.”
Life as a younger survivor
By 2011, Maguire’s most cancers was in remission. He had missed a very good portion of third and fourth grade which meant that he missed lessons about basic arithmetic and issues like writing in cursive. Radiation to the mind of a creating thoughts can have a huge impact on the way it processes data. Some survivors who acquired radiation to the mind as a baby aren’t capable of dwell independently as adults.
Maguire additionally has to regulate long-term results of therapy together with cardiac dangers and considerations over bone density related to steroid therapy. However he hasn’t let any of this maintain him again. In 2024, he’ll full his grasp’s in bodily schooling, and he hopes to discover a job as a gymnasium instructor someplace in New England, the place he was born and raised. Residing with associates in Windfall, Maguire spends his free time taking part in leisure flag soccer, works out on the gymnasium, and goes for hikes.
![](https://blog.dana-farber.org/insight/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Maguire-with-friends.jpeg)
To assist handle and observe his well being, pediatric survivorship nurse practitioner Jill Brace O’Neill, MS, RN-CS, PNP, nonetheless sees Maguire repeatedly. These appointments are a consolation to him.
“Our sufferers and their households have weathered a storm,” says Brace O’Neill. “At Dana-Farber, we wish them to know that they aren’t alone afterwards, and we’re right here to information them as survivors.”
Along with her experience in pediatric oncology survivorship, Brace O’Neill has monitored Maguire for the final eight years in a method that an ordinary main care doctor — who doesn’t have information of the results most cancers therapy — couldn’t. She hopes to empower her sufferers with schooling and safety. “Jake’s case is so inspiring,” she says. “To see him residing on his personal and the way far he has come jogs my memory of why I turned an oncology supplier.”
And for Maguire, the visits are a consolation.
“It’s reassuring to know that Jill and Dana-Farber have my again,” he says.